RADLEY: Brand Story

Radley was founded in 1998 by Lowell Harder, our Creative Director. Radley is a great, creative British brand, which makes beautiful handbags and accessories that are a pleasure for women to own. Our love for colour and hand-crafted, distinctive design is reflected in our products, as is our slightly eccentric Englishness! We explore the known and not so known cultures and crafts of the world for our inspiration but always delight in the vibrant pulse of our design home London.

Company Ethos

We will never make a bag just because it sells. We will never make a bag just because it’s fashionable. We will never make a bag we don’t feel passionate about. We are devoted to making beautiful things that women can fall in love with.

We live for making beautiful things. This kind of zeal comes from heartfelt, individual creativity. We like to think our company is where this kind of creativity feels at home. For every handbag we make we seek out original design, exceptional hand-crafting, distinctive pattern work, extraordinary colour schemes and unusual textures.

What Creative Means To Us

Hundreds of companies use the word ‘creative’ and each one would give you a different definition. That’s because the word means different things to everyone who uses it.
So what does it mean to us?
It means lighting fires of inspiration and doing our job with passion. It means being restless. It means coming to work everyday and loving what you do. Being stimulated by the world outside the window as well as the world inside your head.

It means being open minded and listening to others because an idea will not mind who has it. It means cultivating a disciplined eye and a wild mind. And it means thinking of our handbags as works of art and ourselves as artists, because having a vision is our biggest asset.

The Art of the Colourful

The way we use colour is the essence of Radley. But colourful is more than that. We use colour to capture humour, or display an emotion. To give off attitude or make a statement. To add character and enrich. To bring fun into our lives and onto our products.

The Element of Surprise

‘Better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation’.

Like everybody, we love surprises. Everyday we go hunting for new ideas that inspire us to create new products. It could be something as simple as a piece of embroidery that turns a handbag into something magical. It might be a swatch of material, an unusual pattern or texture that nobody’s seen worked in leather before.

There are no rules to how we do this. We approach what is possible for Radley with an open brief and an open mind. The results are always surprising.

It’s got to be real

From the moment of inspiration to the final construction of a bag, we need to be convinced that the end product will be right. It’s a process that takes time. We don’t cut corners, but nor are we extravagant. We take great care to source the right materials and skills needed to make our idea live. The people we do business with have to share our inspiration, so we can work with them as partners.